Part 1: Introduction

by Mike Walsh

Made in the mid
70s, The Tube Bar is a bizarre, enthralling, and wonderfully chaotic
recording of a series of prank phone calls made by a group of callers
(who were unknown until recently) to the small Jersey City taproom of
the title. Originally passed around as an in-joke by the bar's patrons,
the tape became an underground favorite with everyone from the New York
Mets to the staff at Caroline records, an alternative label. The appeal
of the tape is both basic and bizarre: what starts out as a dumb but
harmless game explodes into a violent, hateful, yet hysterically funny
verbal jousting match.

The premise of the
phone pranks on The Tube Bar is simple. The prankster calls up the Tube
Bar and asks to speak with someone like Pepe Roni, Hal Ja-Like-a-Kick,
Phil My-Pockets, or Al Coholic. When the bartender unwittingly shouts
to his patrons, Ja-Like-a-Kick! Call for Ja-Like-a-Kick! Hal Ja-Like-a-Kick,
the prankster giggles and hangs up. Whats fascinating about The
Tube Bar isnt the phone prank but what happens when our merry
prankster tangles with Red, owner of the Tube Bar.

Red
is a cantankerous, foul-mouthed, gravel-voiced old coot who doesnt
think much of phone pranks. Hes from a time gone by, when men
settled their differences the honorable way--face to face with their
fists.

Perhaps the most
amazing thing about Red is his voice. So raspy is hurts, this marvelous
instrument immediately conjures images of jumping freight trains, hard
times on skid row, the Great Depression, and WWII. Reds voice
is so far gone its actually got the kind of resonance and distortion
that noise bands spend years honing.

Once Red catches
onto the silly prank, the aging taproom owner uses each call as an opportunity
to blast the prankster with every ounce of strength in his ravaged vocal
chords, bandying about multisyllabic profanities like confetti. Here's
a typical sample:

Red: Why you yellow
rat bastard, you motherfucker, cocksucker. Your mothers been sucking
my prick for many years Why dont you come over and meet
me face to face, you motherfucker Ill meet you wherever
you want.

The caller soon
becomes more interested in Reds feverishly obscene performance
and drops all pretense of the prank. Instead, he begins calls with rather
direct statements like, Ive had it with you, you sonovabitch.
Where do you want to meet me and have it out?

You can almost hear
the veins popping out of Red temples when he screams, Why you
lousy sonovabitch, Ill give you $500 to come down here.

Red repeatedly dares
the caller to come to the Tube Bar because he has some nasty plans for
the prankster. When I catch up with you, Red tells the yellow
rat bastard Ill cut Zs in each of your cheeks.
On another occasion he threatens to cut the callers stomach open
to show you all the black stuff you got in there.

Of course, the caller
has no intention of meeting Red. His only intention is to bait Red into
even more, crazed ranting, what the record sleeve refers to as cranking.

While not challenging
each others courage, much of this friendly repartee involves graphic
descriptions of sex acts supposedly performed by the others mother.
Red is particularly adept on this subject, but the prankster gets in
a brilliant zinger when he boasts of being intimate with Reds
mothers corpse, which he claims to have dug up from the grave.

Of course, Red could
hang up on his tormentors at any time, but he seems to feed off the
calls, cherishing this outlet for his mighty ream of anger and frustration.
Collaborators rather than adversaries, a weird symbiotic relationship
develops. They seem to need each other.